James Van Der Beek

You likely remember James Van Der Beek as the star of teen-drama Dawson's Creek. Since the series ended in 2003, James has kept busy and grown in front of the camera and audiences. TheCelebrityCafe.com's Allison Manchel spoke with James about acting and his latest role as an FBI agent in Formosa Betrayed.

Allison Manchel: How did you get into acting?

James Van Der Beek: Wow. Well I got a concussion playing football and I could not play tackle football. When I was 13 years old I did my first play and I really, really loved it. It was kind of like being on a team in which there was no enemy so that's kind of how I started. I started doing Community Theater and by the time I was 15 I was asking my mother to take me to New York City to audition professionally.

I auditioned for a year and a half before I got anything. The first job I got was an off- off Broadway play. That was a real defining experience for me because it taught me not only do I know that I love this, but I also figured out that I could do it. I could hold my own.

Toward the end of my sophomore year in college I got a pilot for this television show in Wilmington, North Carolina, which is a place I've never heard of. And that ran for six years.

AM: You were on Dawson's Creek for six seasons, how did it feel when it ended?

JVDB: I was ready. I was certainly ready for it to be done. And to be honest I was kind of burnt out. You work in a television show, its ten months out of the year and I was doing movies in between. It was a fantastic opportunity, I'm really grateful for it, but at the same time it was exhausting. I came back to New York, did some theater, and I was just burnt out. By the time it was done it had been a really great run. It felt like it was time to move on and grow up.

AM: How does it feel seeing what your costars are doing now?

JVDB: We all kind of went through this crazy thing and I'm really kind of proud and kind of grateful that we all seemed to pull through it really well. Not only are we not in jail, we're actually working and still relevant. I credit that to Kevin Williamson for casting us and to the crew in Wilmington; they helped ground us quite a bit.

AM: Do you have a preference of playing a role in a comedic show or a dramatic show?

JVDB: I enjoy doing both. I also enjoy finding the comedy in some dramatic stuff. I started out doing drama, and any comedy I do I try to find the truth in it first. I'm very grateful that I've been allowed to go back and forth and do both.

AM: How is filming a movie different than filming a TV show?

JVDB: Well the movie is, you kind of get in and raise the stakes for your character and then you get out. In a television series you have a lot more time to tell the story. I like shaking it up and moving on afterwards, and for that reason film is fun. There can be great consistency in TV, if you're lucky enough.

AM: In Formosa Betrayed you play an FBI Agent. How did you prepare for this role?

JVDB: When I first read the script I thought it really worked as a thriller. I asked afterwards, 'did this really happen' and I was told it did. It was inspired by true events and the situation we were depicting actually happened. And then I'd been told the story had never been told before, and I had to be apart of it.

My character [Jake Kelly] starts to figure some things out and finds some conspiracy. In terms of the history my character was fairly ignorant, as was I, to what was actually going on at the time.

In terms of preparation, the people who lived through this are still around and some put up money for this movie to be made. They thanked me for doing it with tears in their eyes. That really grounded it for me. It was such a huge victory for them and it meant so much to them, and I really connected to that in terms of just feeling like we were doing something bigger than any of us.

AM: Was filming this movie a different experience than filming other movies because it was based on true events?

JVDB: You always try to find the truth and try to make the people as real as possible whether they based off real people or not. We shot one scene protesting in Chicago were the people leading the protest actually led the protest back in the day; it's just that much more immediate. It's just right there, the reality of it is just right there in your face.

AM: Did you enjoy filming in Thailand, or did the language barrier make things difficult?

JVDB: There was definitely a language barrier. We had a 90 percent non-English speaking crew. They were all 90 percent Buddhist too, so you'd bow to them in the morning instead of shaking their hand. It was tricky to have a language barrier, but at the same time it developed the character because he's going through so much. You can do the same thing on a sound stage in front of a green screen, but to actually be in the environment you're in, playing people who existed, there's nothing like it. It's right there.

AM: If you could act with any person, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

JVDB: I would love to have been able to do a scene with Paul Newman, if for no other reason than to watch him work and just hang out in between takes and ask him about his charitable work. He was a real film icon and by all accounts a tremendous human being.

Formosa Betrayed arrives in theaters on February 26.